


give me something (to hold on to)

by silverliningingold



Series: ...since I lost you [2]
Category: Gintama
Genre: Affection, Angst, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24800830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverliningingold/pseuds/silverliningingold
Summary: Gintoki's lips press wetly in a pained smile as he keeps laying himself out in pieces. "…I'm really struggling here."
Relationships: Hijikata Toshirou/Sakata Gintoki, Sakata Gintoki & Yoshida Shouyou
Series: ...since I lost you [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2097072
Comments: 30
Kudos: 155





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **...me being the _absolute idiot_ that I am I accidentally deleted the second chapter when I was trying to edit it. The worst thing is the comment Zamietka left got deleted too…I’m so sorry and I’m really upset at my clumsy idiotic self but please know that I have it in my email inbox and just thank you thank you thank you for your wonderful words, you really made my day!**

He can hear his own heavy breaths inside his ears, but for some reason he is unable to hear the outside world, at least at first. His senses are coming in, abuzz. On his right someone is screaming. Was. He can’t so much as turn his neck to the side. He can’t stand. There is a pulse of pain spiking from his shoulder to his temple.

All around him there’s bustling, but it’s the quiet sort of chaos that frays at nerve-endings. The gleam of light glares into his eyes, but the edges of his vision are placated with darkness.

Among the silent commotion, Hijikata’s eyes fall on him and Gintoki’s breath catches quick in his throat for another reason altogether. He doesn’t move, feels frozen to the cracked asphalt, feels unbalanced, whilst Hijikata makes his way to him in steady strides. He crouches down, one knee on the ground, one elbow resting in the other.

Before Gintoki even knows it, Hijikata is already brushing the hair away from his face.

“You’re hurt.” His voice is but a roughened whisper.

Gintoki shivers, leans into the _warmth_ offered to him, disoriented. “…Uh?”

He can’t seem to recall what happened, or where he is exactly. He swore he was laughing only minutes prior, but that abruptly stopped for one reason or another. Maybe he got involved in an accident of sorts.

At one point gentle dabbing starts at his forehead, a soft pressure, and for a few slow heartbeats Gintoki closes his eyes against the comfortable pounding in his head.

Hijikata is so _unsurprisingly_ careful, despite his sometimes brazen attitude and words, his cautious approach is always so _relieving._ The pads of his fingers brush through his hair so tenderly, the affection makes something within Gintoki ache so sweetly, overwhelmingly so, until it starts hurting.

When it lifts away, the side of his hand and wrist come away splashed in crimson droplets.

“Are you okay?” His whisper carries over windless, the concern tangible in his tone.

 _‘I’m always okay whenever you’re around.’_ Gintoki wants to tell him… but he doesn’t.

“…Yeah.” He breaths out instead, stomach dropping. “Yeah. M’fine.”

Blazing rays peek through stormclouds, lifting away the worried undertone in Hijikata’s face, lighting the beginning of a smile dripping in kindness.

Gintoki wants to reach out, reach for him, but he can’t, he doesn’t, he’s too scared- he _can’t._ He returns the gesture with a feeble smile of his own.

His hands feel empty.

Something rips, something’s coming apart, he can tell, he knows _already,_ alright, he _knows._ But with no clean-cut break he’s not sure this can even be considered a proper fracture.

Something snaps hot in his chest, cuts him, his eyes sting with it. It hurts.

He has nothing to hold on to. His hands _are empty._

Gintoki feels like crying.

* * *

When Gintoki was little he used to have these outbursts, spikes that lasted, that filled his days. It didn’t happen often enough for it to be considered a reoccurrence, but it was often enough for him to start recognizing it.

Anger sparks throughout his whole body, and sheer willpower is welcome but incapable of containing the worst of it.

This anger is not quite burning and it’s not quite simmering, rather it’s both, and neither. At times ice crawls up his veins and sinks in cold and unforgiving, at times steam burns at the stem of his brain and builds up and up until he explodes around it. Or implodes, given the situation.

But the anger gets so _loud_ sometimes and Gintoki doesn’t know what to do, no one has ever explained to him how to quiet it down. That’s why getting caught up in brawls with other kids seems like the safer option to get rid of something he was never taught how to deal with in the first place.

And what’s there to lose anyway? You can’t lose much when you don’t have much at all to begin with.

After the fights, sometimes the anger fades on its own, leaving emptiness in its wake, leaving a hollowed out version of _something_ that used to take up all of him.

Shinsuke usually loiters somewhere not too far from him, always helping when Gintoki is in need, when the other kids are having the upper hand, but never staying long enough for Gintoki to ask _why_ he decided to get beaten up along with him. He acts like _such_ a protective brother sometimes and then he has the nerve to hide away and pretend it never even happened.

Sometimes it makes Gintoki hide a smile. And sometimes it hurts, too.

On bad days, when Gintoki ends up getting too exhausted to do anything but sit and let someone take the pain away from him, his teacher helps. At times he is the one to ask why, other times he silently presses his lips together in a thin and sad line as if he _knows._

Getting taken care of sort of hurts, Gintoki has come to realize, but it has nothing to do with actual pain, at least not the kind he has gotten familiar with. The ache spreading through him now is new, too bittersweet. 

He had seen them, the other kids with their parents. The kindness they’re shown is the same kindness Gintoki is shown by his teacher. He wonders if the other kids feel the same way too when their parents take the pain away, then stops and thinks why is he even wondering in the first place…

“Sensei?”

Kind, weary eyes fall on him.

“How…” His voice is an uncertain hush, hesitantly treading through waters he isn’t sure he wants to get acquainted with. “…how do you know if someone cares about you?”

His teacher’s answers are abstract at times, they make his head spin, other times the understanding is more physical yet still out of his grasp. But this, _this_ Gintoki remembers vividly, cupping both hands around it like a flame about to fizzle out. 

“I think,” His teacher gradually shows a rueful, but radiant smile, the duality coexisting on his face, inside his words. “Whoever cares about you gives you something to hold on to.”

Gintoki might be too young to properly understand this new kind of pain, still unable to rationalize it into something meaningful, but he _knows_ it so well and that’s what gives _meaning_ to it.

After that his throat closes up on its own, his eyes start stinging, he tries to blink away the saltwater that travels down his puffed cheeks to no use, chokes on it. It hurts.

His teacher brushes aside wisps of curls sticking to his face, whispers words of comfort to him, but they fall flat, Gintoki doesn’t hear.

The anger gets _unbearable_ in moments like these and- _oh._ Maybe it’s not quite anger at all, maybe he isn’t aware of what it is, or maybe it’s just always been pure _hurt._

For the first time, Gintoki thinks he wants to try, and he tries, with skinned knees and sore knuckles and a bruised soul, he tries to hold on to this _something_ with all his might.

And it works, but not in the way he had imagined nor hoped.

…But then again, he had thought he would be given more time to hold on to his teacher. He had not even entertained the thought that losing him would mean having nothing to hold on to anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Give Me Something, Seafret](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=620-Dzq25jc)
> 
> Get this song away from me it broke my heart and my _soul_ what the _heck!_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It felt too incomplete to leave it as a one-shot, so in the spur of the moment and thanks to lovely encouragement I decided I needed to add a second part to it.

A hazy fog has taken his mind hostage, it's with him throughout the trip back to the barracks and the false sense of alleviation after a lukewarm shower, it's with him through his changing of clothes that aren't stained in his spilled blood and the unsure walk back to the room, where Hijikata tells him he will dress his injury because Gintoki can't possibly bear the idea of being cooped up in a hospital at the moment.

But this vertiginous dizziness almost abates once Hijikata is taking care of his wound, of him. Through the careful ministrations, with every brush of warm, deft fingers and cool gauze wrapping around his head, it almost feels like his vision clears, somewhat.

Childishly, naively so, an innocent thought ripples through the smokescreen of his mind. _Hijikata is taking his pain away._ It still hurts, but in a humane, nostalgic way.

Leaden skies threatening rain stand outside, drawing weightless shadows inside the room, but unable to pierce through the warmth of this safe haven. Because his safe place has never been literal- the comfort, he has always found it in people, and is now finding it in Hijikata.

But even if this man represents an anchor, he can't drive Gintoki's affliction away when it's anchored so deep in his marrow, when heartache twists his bones and shapes them into something, someone unrecognizable.

Air comes in an out of rhythm play of strenuous inhales and exhales between the slight parting of his lips, and the incessant pounding reverberating in his torso is so relentless he isn't even sure he can feel his heart anymore.

Once he is done, Hijikata stands again, putting a few feet of distance between them, his back to him.

There is an ache inside Gintoki's chest, outspreading to his limbs, to the tips of his fingers, everywhere it can extend, and he almost can't breathe.

"…I know you're not fine." Hijikata states, latching to their brief exchange a couple hours prior, with his back still turned. His voice is low but it manages to echo off the walls inside his room much too loudly.

Gintoki freezes, caught unaware by the reveal. But, after a moment's notice, he lets out a long, tense breath through the locked up tension seizing his body. Hijikata has always been so perceptive even in normal, day to day circumstances, of course he would catch on a situation this dire. The two of them almost have a sixth sense when it comes to each other, after all.

When Hijikata turns to face him again, his eyes are a medley of sorrow and softness. "Do you want to talk to me?"

He is not pushing, rather, he is giving him space, giving him the chance to retreat further inside the shield he has built over the years, managing to protect but alienate himself at the same time.

Gintoki hasn't been able to _stop_ thinking, to stop _remembering,_ to search the past for redemption- but how can he even begin to right that wrong? He had tried, he _did,_ with _every_ ounce of himself _,_ he had tried holding on to hope once, but it had only drained him, leaving a desert of emptiness in its wake, too barren for anything to grow above it.

"I'm just-" His fists clench, nails catching on the skin, something pulses inside him, swells inside his ribcage, a flood of words is congesting his throat and all the while he doesn't know what to say. He feels so damn _angry._ The heat of anger is all he can taste sometimes, he knows it's buried down deep, beneath the surface, chafing the beating and numb organ inside of him if he looks too closely. But something else lies concealed, somehow sheltered, something he is too afraid to touch, to uncover-

"Hurt."

Gintoki's head snaps up at the answer, only realizing after a breath he is not the one who uttered it.

"…You're hurt."

Hijikata sounds so heartbroken, so downcast, so miserable. Gintoki feels undeserving of such pure intentions and emotions, and at the same time hates himself for being the one who put them there, seeing them surface in the eyes of the person he cares about the most.

"I…"

He knows, _of course_ he does, of course he _knows,_ it's hurt in its purest form. Hurt hovers over him in such an oppressive way only death itself could manage, engulfing him in its unfolding darkness, suffocating him, tangling in his every thought.

The hurt is so cloying he thinks feeling it at times means not feeling human anymore.

Years have gone by and he has never found a way to process such a fathomless loss, so devastating and horrifying it has touched upon every corner of his mind, every gap in his life, corrupting countless memories, sullying them.

On the worst days his hands are not only empty, they are covered in a flow of crimson.

At his worst Gintoki sees him in his dreams- _nightmares-_ gushing blood and enshrouding him underneath a tidal wave of pain, agonizingly submerging him until he dissolves beneath it.

At times the blood curdling horror is all he sees unveiling in front of his eyes.

"…I guess I'm… struggling." At the admittance, Gintoki finds it in himself to lift his head, hold his gaze. His eyes glaze over and his eyelashes clump together with saltwater, the lump in his throat is three sizes bigger now, and his heart is teem with anguish and bursting at the seams in desperation.

This hurt is so bitterly familiar and all at once new.

Hijikata's shoulders sag further, his face falls and he takes an unsteady, small step forward, breathing around his name.

Gintoki's lips press wetly in a pained smile as he keeps laying himself out in pieces. "…I'm really struggling here."

Hijikata walks the remaining distance, gradually closing the space between them, until, once again, he is crouched in front of him.

A fine glaze of tears shines translucent and unshed in Hijikata's eyes, as if they share the same hurt. "You seem to forget…" He brings one hand to touch the side of Gintoki's face, mindful of the unseen wounds; physical and otherwise. "Struggling doesn't make you weak." His voice drops to a barely audible murmur, but he is meeting his eyes, unrelenting. "It's what makes you human."

Flickers of warmth spark down his spine at the openness he continues discovering in Hijikata, sheltering him against the icy dread of his own mind.

Gintoki bites the inside of his cheek, cutting off the eye contact for only a moment. "…I thought I was the one supposed to have the cooler lines?"

"Don't be greedy, leave some for the rest of us."

A sincere little smile tears out of him and Hijikata answers back with a smiling display of his own.

But it's fleeting at best.

Grief sinks in, over and over again, in the form of a blade digging deep inside his gut. But it's solely his fault. He has only himself to blame.

Blame for the sleepless nights, blurred together in a stretch that had him hollowed out to the point he couldn't cry anymore, depriving him of an outlet, leaving him without a way to let go of the noxious dread building inside of him. And when sleep came, scarce at best, it had him drifting ashore between emptiness and darkness, and in the thick of it the numbness was only washed under debris of pain.

Blame for the hopelessness and despair he saw, _sees,_ mirrored in the eyes of his comrades, of the people he held so closely inside his heart he could not consider them anything else if not his brothers. And he brought hell upon them in the form of the worst injustice.

And blame for a loss so detrimental, whatever lies circumambient to it loses meaning.

"…I don't know what to do." His voice comes out subdued, a jarring whisper, and he gasps quietly around the truthful words. Twin drops of tears fall in paper-thin rivers down his eyes and he feels their weight, feels the hot contrast of them against the coldness of his bruised cheeks. This is the more honest he has ever been.

He never meant for things to turn out the way they did, he never meant for life to go on in such a way. He never meant to move on. He never meant to still feel stuck in the ghost of a dead life he can't hear the breathing of anymore.

He never meant to be the root cause of the worst thing that could happen to him, to the whole wide world in its entirety. The cause of a tragedy so great no amount of pain could ever measure up to.

But in this never ending torment all he can do is bare his ailing for Hijikata to see, the act heavily unfamiliar and infinitely intimate it feels as if he is baring his blood-soaked insides, having his hurt spread open, so tender and raw.

Losing someone- someone he grew so attached to, someone he considered family not by blood but by choice and through actions- left him half of what he had been. It's as if he was cut open. Vital organs, layers of tissue, critical veins, warm muscles, frail ligaments, sensitive nerve-endings, they were all taken away from him. Leaving him to deal with trying to fill voids in himself he couldn't possibly begin to imagine the depth of, only to never be whole again.

He is still alive, but this is half of his soul he is never going to get back no matter how hard he tries. He is still alive, but barely.

"And who said you need to?" Hijikata's mere touch is soothing, cupping his jaw as if his skin is made out of frangible glass shards. His thumb pushes against his cheekbone, lightly so, resting beside the path saltwater leaves in its wake, but he doesn't make a move to wipe at it. As if the evidence of tears can show Gintoki this concrete proof of suffering isn't weakness, but that strength comes in different nuances and it can be, _should_ _be,_ vulnerable too.

Hijikata knows. He _knows_ grief is so paralyzing it carves him inside out. Grief is the physical abstraction of his worst fears. Grief is sleeping terror in the longest nights with a definite start but without an ending in sight. Gintoki can do his best to fake painless ignorance around it, but he can't rid himself of the guilt until he learns to accept where it comes from.

And Gintoki wonders if he ever will. Maybe it will keep sinking in throughout the rest of his life. And maybe he will never stop mourning him, he will never stop mourning the person his teacher could have been, could have become.

On the worst days his hands feel empty…

…but they are _not._

Part of him knows his hands are not empty. Not anymore.

Gintoki doesn't reach for him, still doesn't feel that he can allow himself to be any more selfish. But Hijikata does.

He reaches forward, takes his hands into his own. And, raising them at the height of their chins, he brings them up to his lips and kisses the back of his hands, kisses each gap between Gintoki's knuckles with lips feather soft, the gesture lacquered in his affection. On the kindness of a shared breath, their foreheads press together.

"You also seem to forget you are _not_ alone." Hijikata reiterates words they have both spoken during the unending, sleepless, dreadful kind of nights in which they were worn down to their bones. "Whatever happens, we'll get through this. Together." His eyes gleam with steel resolve. "I won't leave you to face hell alone, you know that. I never will."

The words roll out in the stillness of their surroundings, in the irrequietude of his mind.

Gintoki's eyes fall shut and he shifts closer, into the _warmth_ Hijikata offers. And he can only offer his heart battered and cut up in return, in the form of still feeble, trembling, cracking, but genuine words. "…I love you… _so_ _much."_

He can't see it, but in his mind's eye he can clearly imagine the way the heftiness of the day is lifting off of Hijikata at his repeated reassurance. "I love you. So much." The tremble in his voice is faint, but not lacking Gintoki's same emotion.

Underneath flesh and blood, underneath writhing muscles and organs, underneath brittle bones and deep-seated emotion… what lies underneath the underneath, what remains at the core of being human; grief, love. So intertwined, one can't exist without the other.

Who he lost was someone irreplaceable. Whatever he had managed to keep hold of slipped out of his weak grasp. _Nothing_ will ever make that right.

But he had never even entertained the idea that one day he would be granted another chance at being alive, but _living._

That Hijikata would come to care for him in ways no one ever had, giving him something so endlessly precious to hold on to. And Gintoki wants to hold on, with everything he is and everything he has, he _wants_ to hold on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story and [Medicine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23887618) have been an eventful ride for me. A short one, but still. In my mind they are somehow connected, two versions of the same thing. In a way.
> 
> When I wrote these two stories I thought no one was going to read them, honestly. I thought no one would even be interested, let alone share their wonderful thoughts with me. And maybe I should share something too. I've been doing an unfair amount of projecting myself into Gintoki in these two stories (…ahah… as if I haven't always done it), but this time it's been painful and I've been trying to learn to deal with issues I don't even know what to do about. And writing has surprisingly helped, at least as an outlet. I have tears in my eyes writing this, which is pathetic, but thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who has read these and left their thoughts. And thank you for being so kind to me when I need it most.
> 
> I feel selfish opening up (well, trying to) like this with everything that's currently happening in the world, **I just want to add, in a very hypocritical way, please please please take care of yourselves, try to help yourselves, it's important, you're important. Please stay safe.**


End file.
